Columns

This was the first Mother’s Day I haven’t spent time with my mom in person since Darlington Raceway down in South Carolina, where I used to live and work, had a NASCAR race on Mother’s Day weekend. Race week and weekend in Darlington meant all hands on deck for news coverage, and rarely did I escape my newspaper duties to head to North Carolina and see Mom.

It’s the date of the Kent State University shootings, also known as the Kent State Massacre, when four students were killed and nine others injured by the Ohio National Guard during an on-campus Vietnam War protest.

Davis, a Carolina Shores town commissioner, was a 19-year-old freshman at Kent State when the shots rang out. Not only did he hear it, he witnessed the incident from his third-story dormitory room.

I never knew Robert Stanley, but I like to think he and I would’ve gotten along really well.

Stanley, who founded The Brunswick Beacon in 1962, died April 25 at the age of 81. By all accounts, he took great pride in the newspaper and understood how important it is to the community. To think I came to succeed someone like him as an editor at the Beacon is an honor I haven’t fully grasped yet.

All kinds of myths and rumors circulate during elections. Don't be discouraged; a scary story may be aimed at making you think voting is too difficult to do.

As an independent watchdog group, Democracy North Carolina receives all kinds of reports on our hotline at (888) OUR-VOTE. We encourage voters to review the candidates at www.ncvotered.organd call the hotline if you have any problems as you vote.

Last month, Alina Davinson of Ocean Isle Beach asked me a series of questions about my job here at the Beacon for a newswriting class assignment at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is a junior minoring in journalism and mass communications. I hope my answers translated into an A-plus for her, but if her j-school professors are as tough as mine were back in the day, I know they don’t hand out good grades like candy. Based on her questions, though, I believe she’d make an outstanding journalist.

Most of the time, the people who come by to speak to the editor have two reasons for doing so.

The first reason is they want to introduce themselves and comment about our news coverage. I’ll always welcome this. I’m never OK, though, with people who bypass our front desk and barge into the newsroom (or my office) unannounced, no matter how friendly their intentions.